Amazon Apocalypse 5: Chapter 7

Each world we cleared was a little harder than the last. I picked up a few trinkets along the way, like a peculiar-looking sigil pendant from the demon world that looked like a shining sun. To me, it looked like some sort of magical decentralized all-purpose communication device. It was almost like a more primitive version of the System, and it would definitely be worth studying.

Cyra grabbed a few weapons. Most were familiar to us, as the bulk of worlds seemed to throw enemies at us that fought with swords and spears. One world in particular tried to bring us down with a cannon, which Cyra took as her prize.

“Look, it’s like those Rods of Annihilation things you made!” Cyra said as she fired an enormous load of metal shrapnel out of the cannon’s front.

“Just don’t whip that thing out on the battlefield back on Themyscira!” I cautioned her. I had helped her set up the thing and even added a few enchantments so she could fire it with a touch instead of lighting a fuse.

Much like Earth, large parts of the Arcadia Multiverse had outlawed shotgun-like weapons for warfare. Apparently, such weapons were bad for the glorious and heroic frontal charges most armies favored, including Amazonians. Odds were nobody would protest if we used such weapons in the war against cultivators and heretics on Ladwick though. I might have to make a few more of those Rods of Annihilation for my troops.

Morania caught both of our attention soon after. “The power of so many worlds flows through me.!Just one more now.”

Cyra and I shared a brief look.

“So our adventure with you is nearly at an end?” I asked.

“That’s right. Just one more world, then I can return home,” Morania breathed shakily. She seemed full to bursting with mana, like an overfull balloon ready to explode.

“Cyra and I will rest and recover awhile. The final world is probably going to be the hardest to clear,” I said.

Morania reluctantly agreed to wait. Cyra and I healed up the injuries we accumulated and refilled our resource pools. We wanted to go into this next fight in top form. I’d used Living Paradox a short while prior and wanted to make sure that was ready again for the final fight.

***

“Ready to depart?” Morania asked

I adjusted my belt so my sword was close at hand and made sure I was full on mana, stamina, health, and that all my ability cooldowns were over. I exchanged a nod with Cyra who was ensuring the same.

“Yep. Let’s go."

“Wonderful! Something truly grand awaits you for your reward,” Morania smiled widely.

The final teleportation began, sweeping us away to the last zone.

We arrived in a stone chamber lit only by brightly burning torches along the wall. In the center of the chamber sat a grand chair, with a glowing core positioned in front of it like the kind of orb you’d see people peering into to look into the future.

I recognized the orb. That thing was a smaller version of a core, like the kind I’d purified on a quest with some adventurers to free it from the power of chaos. Before our intervention, the core had been corrupted to produce only chaos monsters.

“Welcome to my home, honored guests. This palace will soon be the heart of my glorious new Empire!” Morania tossed back her hair and threw back the cloak I’d given her, which had originally been Myrina’s. The movement revealed corrupted purple lines running along her skin, each bursting with an unmistakably malevolent power. Her hair seemed to go from brown to so inky black it seemed to suck in light from all around her like a dark halo.

“What about our reward?” Cyra asked.

Morania unleashed a wicked laugh. “Your reward, my dear guards, is to continue serving me forever more! You shall be my left and right hand as I make a new world in my own image. But first, I’ll need to take those pesky souls off you. I’d rather not deal with free-willed servants.”

The torches bloomed with purple fire, and before my eyes, Morania’s level shot up. She wasn’t the humble D-Grade she’d presented herself as.

Morania, Chaos Godling Aspirant (Level 235)

“She’s B-Grade,” I said.

Cyra smiled. “Good. Perfect for my quest.”

We hadn’t breathed a word of it aloud for fear that Morania would react to our suspicions, but Cyra and I had been wary of her from the start. There was no way a B-Grade dungeon didn’t have a B-Grade final boss. So far, all the monsters we’d fought had been C-Grade or lower, which meant this was the real challenge of the dungeon and where we’d win our real prize.

“Well?” Morania asked. Now her voice had a harsh hiss to it, and her tongue flicked out, forked and longer than usual. “Shall you submit and surrender your souls to my eternal keeping?”

Cyra pulled out her new cannon, and our reply came in the form of its thunderous roar.

Kaboom!

Morania reeled back from the explosion. Cyra had gotten good at aiming that unwieldy thing, and she’d scored a direct hit. But a cannon to the face wouldn’t take down a B-Grade, even with my upgrades.

“Fools!” Morania coughed, spluttering and waving smoke away from her face. “I will just have to pry your souls away from you by force!”

I launched a rapid flurry of Mana Bolts. Meanwhile, Cyra rushed to the front with her sword at the ready. Thanks to all the monsters we’d fought together, we’d gotten quite good at fighting together. I wasn’t nearly as good a swordsman as she was, but between my own skill and knowing how Cyra fought, I could usually predict where she was going and steer my attacks around her.

I did so now, aiming dust and air Mana Bombs right for Morania’s face. They didn’t do much damage, but they blinded her to Cyra’s charge. A haze of blue light coated Cyra’s enchanted sword, and she shoved it forward with all her weight and strength. The tip of her blade slammed into Morania’s stomach, cutting right through her clothes and carving a gash in her skin.

“Back!” Morania screamed in indignant outrage. The torches around us glared brighter, and a great whip of fire curled around her. The whip slashed at where Cyra was standing, forcing her to retreat in my direction.

While Cyra was keeping our opponent busy, I finished activating my abilities in rapid succession. Most of the passives had been active before we’d even teleported in, but I’d waited to be certain we were fighting before activating the most powerful of them.

The three Dragon Lodge abilities I was most familiar with burned hot in my chest, Dragonscaled Mage, Dragoneyed Mage, and Dragonblooded Mage. Soon I’d add Dragonsouled Mage to their mix, but that was for after I reached B-Grade.

A shimmering wall of fire mana appeared between Morania and Cyra, presumably to protect the former from another charge by the latter. I activated Void Cannon to crack the barrier. A sphere of churning eldrich power leaped from my hands and crashed into the wall of energy, turning it back on itself and detonating it as an explosion in Morania’s face.

Cyra kept up the pressure while I readied another wave of Mana Bolts. She hacked and slashed as best she could, though her average blow left little more than papercuts. Her initial stab still left a gash that dripped blood though, and it lit brightly in my vision with the aid of Exploit Weakness. I would be targeting that weakness soon.

But first...

“Sharky! I changed my mind. You can eat her,” I yelled.

As soon as Morania recovered her bearings and was ready to shove Cyra aside again, Sharky charged for with jaws open wide. B-Grade or not, all he saw was the snack he was denied. He lashed out with spectral teeth, keeping Morania busy for that much longer.

When she beat him back as well, I had a wave of Mana Bolts ready for her. More than a hundred hovered around my head, all of different aspects empowered by Doom Seeker. I targeted her wounds, then used Time Stutter to guide my attack home as best I could.

The bolts slammed into Morania one after another, stacking up Corrupting Marks as they did so and dealing even more damage than Cyra’s initial charge had done. Better, my Corrupting Marks would stay on her, slowly dealing more damage the longer the fight went on.

For a while, it looked like we might beat our B-grade foe easily. But I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. Something was going on with her wound. The blood stopped flowing, and my Corrupting Marks had revealed something ugly, brown, and squirming beneath Morania’s flesh.

A few moments later, Morania roared in frustration, cursing our names as she did so.

“Damn you! Couldn’t do this the easy way? Fine!” she snarled, and like that, she shed her human disguise. Skin sloughed off of her like a shedding snake. Beneath it all was a mass of writhing worms. They were no larger than an earthworm, but each had a circular ring of teeth that hissed and spat in unison.

“Gross. But Sakura will be happy when I get to this part...” I muttered. I wasn’t looking forward to telling her about the naked adventurer Cyra and I rescued, but this would make up for it.

“I am a Scholar of Forsaken Knowledge and aspirant of the Court of Chaos! You are but a stepping stone on my path to godhood!” the mass of writhing worms declared.

Suddenly, it was like her every attack was amplified three times over. The fires on the walls burned brighter, and the tendrils of fire multiplied. Suddenly freed from acting like a human, the mass of writhing worms could now focus on their dark spells.

After revealing her true form, Morania’s magic became more sinister. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of my own Sage of Forbidden Knowledge abilities, deep in the depths of Mania. By her own admission, Morania had a scholar class of her own, so she likely had a similar empowerment ability. But she’d lost herself to its temptations long ago.

The way she used her powers seemed different to me as well. Each individual casting was less refined and slower than a skill was, but it was more variable. Instead of a dedicated skill to push enemies back with a wave of fire or hurl a tentacle of flame at Cyra, she seemed to be doing it all with one much more flexible mastery of fire. it was more like cultivator magic than what I was familiar with.

Between that and the lengthy nature of her energy accumulation rituals, I suspected Morania wasn’t based on somebody from the System at all. She might have been modeled off a cultivator, or at least someone who’d embraced a few cultivator ideas. That seemed to be where scholar-type classes like mine led to.

Fire bloomed all around us, and the sturdy stone chamber we were in came apart at the seams.

I activated my Mutlipurpose Glyphs and summoned up my Doomblade Armor, which folded neatly around me and shielded me from the heat. Sharky was driven back. Being incorporeal let him ignore most attacks, but flames of this magnitude could still do some damage.

Cyra shielded her face, falling back as she rummaged through her bag of holding and came up with an enchanted shield. One of mine, I was proud to note.

The stone cracked around us, glowing red hot where the torches once stood. The humanoid body the worms wielded before was back again, but this time, where once had been flesh, it was now pure fire. What’s more, Morania was now a flaming giant, thirty feet tall.

With the throne room destroyed, we could see the outer limits of this tiny pocket realm. The void surrounded us on all sides, and we were on a liferaft of rock and debris, drifting along in a vast sea of nothingness. Points of light glittered in the distance, but who knew if they were stars or ferocious beasts just as large as stars?

Already, our battle was attracting some unwanted attention, and slimy slithering creatures the size of a fingernail were crawling out of the void and onto our battlefield. Each of them were instantly scorched by Morania’s fire, but it was only a matter of time before something bigger came along. I wasn’t sure how much really existed in the space created by the dungeon we were in, but I was pretty sure the dungeon could throw a B-Grade void monster at us if it wanted to. We needed to finish this fight before then.

Cyra was hunched behind her shield. Sharky snapped his jaws in futility, trying to grab a bite of something just out of reach.

If we were going to end this any time soon, it would be up to me.

So I called on Mania, the true might of my Sage of Forbidden Knowledge class. First, Dissonance came, and I grew distant from the world. I felt as though I controlled my body from afar, as one might a puppet. My thoughts were clearer, but they came colder and more calculating.

Then I moved on to Furor, and emotions lit bright in my heart once more. They came crashing down upon me in a sudden wave, far stronger than normal. The sudden change might have been enough to shake me to my core if I hadn’t experienced it so many times before.

Last came Blood Frenzy, and with it the need to fight and kill.

I launched myself forward in my Doomblade Armor, carrying my sword in hand. Arcane Blade coated the length, and I no doubt cut a stunning image as an enormous knight wielding a glowing blade.

“Fool!” Morania growled, stomping down with a foot made entirely of licking flames.

And I would have been a fool to fight her as a warrior. That was Cyra’s strength, not mine. I abandoned my armor midway, and all she did with her stomp was crack the ground beneath her. Meanwhile, I was up close and personal.

I cast Eldrich Blight right on her center of mass. Empowered by Mania, every individual worm was instantaneously afflicted with a Corrupting Mark. Against a larger, singular foe, this attack wouldn’t have done much, but against so many smaller ones the spell was absolutely devastating.

“Argh!” Morania cried out in pain, staggering as her enormous flame arms dispersed for a moment. The writhing worms within her struggled to regain their coordination, but I didn’t plan to let them.

“And... detonate!” I snapped my fingers, triggering my Corrupting Marks. Instantly, many of the worms detonated in a fountain of sticky black gore. But that didn’t end the fight.

The squirming worms tried to regroup, reorganize, and reform Morania. Or at least put up some sort of defense. But I had a plan for that.

“All yours, Sharky!” I yelled, and Sharky opened his maw wide. He was just as affected by Mania as I was. While I’d grown fiercer and less stable, he’d grown a beard’s worth of eldritch tentacles and teeth, which often proved quite useful in devouring everything in sight.

He used those tentacles now to scoop up every worm he could get his hands on and gobble it right down. All but one.

I grabbed what looked to be the last of the worms and flicked it in Cyra’s direction. She reacted instantly, slicing it clean out of the air.

Your party has defeated Morania!

You are at the limits of C-Grade. Your extra experience will be held in abeyance until you reach B-Grade.

Dungeon cleared!

Please select your rewards.

You will be teleported out of the dungeon in two minutes.

“Ha, I did it! Quest completed. B-Grade is mine for the taking. Can you believe it?” Cyra asked me, grinning wide.

I congratulated her while I released Mania and made my way up the steps to the orb. That was a realm core seed if I’d ever seen one, and I planned on taking it with me. Kyrina and Grandma Luthrin both said it was the best thing this dungeon could drop.

Unfortunately, that was the only thing worth taking in the throne room after our battle. The fight had really done a number of the place. I wasn’t sure how we were even breathing, considering there was an empty void in all directions.

“Mission success!” I declared, tossing the orb in my hand and then tucking it into my satchel. “Hopefully your mother and great-grandmother like this little orb thing.”

“We’re not even near the loot limit based on our contributions. We should have grabbed more stuff in the earlier zones,” Cyra said as she flipped through a few System menus. I did the same and realized she was right.

I glanced behind me. The only other thing worth taking in the room was the throne. Sakura, Myrina, and Bridget would definitely have taken it if they were here, but I wasn’t so easily tempted. I started walking away from it, but a few seconds later, my eyes rolled right back over it. It was a shoddy stone thing, really. I could build something much better.

The next minute saw me frantically trying to tug the stone throne out of the ground so we could take it with us. I managed the feat just in time, and pretty soon, the throne was the only thing to hold on to as the dungeon spat us out—right where we arrived, floating in the middle of outer space.

“Huh?” I said, gasping out some of the bit of air I had in surprise. Maybe we should have filled our bags of holding with air for our dungeon reward.

<Note>

I know sometimes these dungeon runs can come off as filler, but I promise there are a lot of breadcrumbs here that tie into bigger picture stuff.